When the second world war ended, 14-year-old Ray Mascord was expected to join his father's building firm. But a chance conversation with the chief projectionist at a cinema he was supposed to be renovating began a 67-year love affair with the big screen.

This week, Mascord, now 80, will finally retire as a projectionist at Scott Cinemas in Bridgwater, Somerset, when it goes digital. Could he be Britain's longest-serving projectionist?

Back in the 1940s, his father was "most upset", Mascord remembers, when he wangled a projectionist traineeship at Tyseley cinema, Birmingham. In those days, the reels only held 2,000ft of film, so a team of five projectionists deployed two projectors and had to swap spools every 20 minutes to keep the film running smoothly.

His heyday, he says, was in the 1950s when wide-screen CinemaScope was introduced with an early form of surround sound. Mascord loved the big musicals – Oklahoma! and Carousel – and the packed houses every night. As a young man, he also enjoyed the view from his booth of the canoodling on the back row.

"I used to say, 'Aye-aye, where are you putting your hands? Watch it mate!'" he recalls.

Then something else caught his eye: an usherette named Eileen. They fell in love and she became his wife – and, before the birth of their three daughters, his third projectionist.

The introduction of towers holding 12,000ft of film, providing two-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted footage, turned the cinema projectionist's job into a solitary one. Twenty years ago, Mascord was made redundant in Birmingham and so telephoned cinemas he remembered from holidays in the West Country. He got a job in Newquay and has moved between theatres in Truro, Taunton, Sidmouth and finally Bridgwater.

Despite so many reels, Mascord can instantly name his favourite film of all time: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. "I went to see it on my wedding night," he says. He and Eileen were let in free to an ABC cinema in Birmingham. "It was a busman's holiday."

Over the years, Mascord has noticed a big change in the audiences. "All you see now at the end of the film are these little mobile phones lighting up as people wonder if they've missed an email," he says. "If you get a quiet bit in a film young lads and girls get fed up and think, let's play something else on our phones."

But, despite that, his best ever audiences were during recent showings of Mamma Mia!. "They sang with the film. I took the porthole glass out and listened to them during the film. At the end, they all applauded."

Retirement does not mark the end of Mascord's love affair with cinema. He believes Scott's will want him in again next week to cope with the tricky transition to an automated digital system. And he'll be back anyway: he intends to make use of his free entry for life next week to catch Tangled, the latest animated musical from Walt Disney. In 3D of course.